


to be there

by Authoress



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, ambiguity and constellation metaphors, hinata has issues, implied char death, introspective and personal, it's not what you expect, kuroo is for hire but not in the way you'd think, suicidal thoughts warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3416042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Authoress/pseuds/Authoress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A birth and a death on the same day, and honey I only appear so I can fade away. </p><p>(And that jet black crow drones on and on and on.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be there

Alone. That's how he'll die, alone, with only the man in draped cloths, thick or sheer as the restlessly lapping waves in the dead of night or the slowly creeping fog making for the morning shore. His face is not visible, but the ceiling is high and stars have been thrown across the ceiling in all the constellations that ever meant something to him. Cancer. Capricorn. Libra. Corvus, a million times Corvus, his celestial wings scattering the dust of the universe's beginnings and newly stirring starts with every beat and sweep of his century-young feathers, the eye of God resting on Hinata in that moment as Corvus looks upon him.

Hinata thinks Corvus might have blinked once in recognition.

"How would you like to go?" A voice as thick and rich as India ink suits the faceless man, slowly spoken with the years of experience and understanding of people like Hinata. He didn't need to fear this reaper with wings painted across the walls with every shimmering reflection of water thrown against them. He is Corvus incarnate, to Hinata, although he advertises himself as a panther, unseeable in the light and misunderstood by all those except the ones who sought him, they themselves shrouded in unseeable dark.

He can be anything for Hinata. A lover, a friend, a brother, a father. Perhaps something more original--an old mentor, a victim of Hinata's, an angel of death, a beast in the dark, a killer--

Well. _That_ much was a known quantity.

"Let me see your hands," Hinata croaks. He does not doubt his resolve in this matter, even as his body protests. A vessel for the soul, isn't that what the Buddhists claimed? Several other religions, too, if he wasn't mistaken. All that doesn't matter to Hinata. He knows that his body does not match with his mind, and that's the important part.

"Let me see your hands," he repeats, stronger this time.

"Alright," the man replies. "Alright."

Moon skin emerges from beneath the sea of space and time, shattering Hinata's illusion of a ethereal entity. Half of him is disappointed--he would have preferred to be killed in the name of Corvus, his one god, the true master of his nature. But like this, he finds life falls short in death as it does in all other things. The man's hands have wrinkles and scars, the occasional blemish, not the holy beauty of an archangel standing in death's doorway. He is imperfect. Hinata cannot die by these hands.

"Life disappoints me as much as it always has," Hinata sighs.

"If my service has displeased you in any way..." The man begins, an edge of humor to his voice.

Hinata waves a hand. "It's not you. You're only human and I'm sure life has ruined you as it has me, too. No, it's the mistress of green and sun and growth and spring that betrays my trust. I am promised beauty and wonder with every sunbeam through the dust motes in the morning, every pleasing stretch and pull of my muscles, every inch of hardwood under my feet, warm in the summer and cool in the winter. And yet--" He breaks off. "Well, you hear many a sob story. Mine isn't so special or glorious."

"On the contrary," the man replies, allowing Hinata's fingers to caress his human skin and human flaws with mild interest. "You're not what I expected at all. I'm not at liberty to ask questions, but I remain as curious a mind as when I began my business."

Hinata pauses at that. Releases the man's hands. Lies back against the cushions of the bed, thoughtful.

"I don't want to die by your hands," he concludes after a long moment. "Your robes, however, still remind me of my one truest and holiest of loves. I would have Him take my dying breath."

"A lover?" The dark figure asks. "Or a man to worship? Perhaps both." He unfurls a section of his tangled cloak, strong and thin.

"I flew, once," Hinata says softly. "Coasting under the wing of a mighty king brought to his knees. Then I learned to open my own eyes and grow in my primaries. I soared, as I was born to. Seeing that far horizon, _that other side_ , that's all I lived for."

"Icarus," the man adds at a murmur, winding the cloth around his hands. "Did the wax melt from your wings so soon? Feathers of dead things strung together with substance not strong enough to withstand heat, fine enough and grand enough to be ignored for the shoddy work it was? Did you drown, Hinata?"

"No, no. Of course I didn't. Those that can't learn from Icarus see their downfall long before I saw mine. The king did not soar, but glided, safe above the waves while his Daedalus made for the holy ball of fire and was sent tumbling down. It was I who flew under Daedalus and the king, climbing as they drifted down, touching the sweetest, highest ceiling of the sky before I collapsed safely to land. It hurt, that fall from heaven, but I believed I would be spared hell."

"You were not," the man surmises, gently looping the cloak turned noose around Hinata's neck. "You had to pay for fooling the gods above and below."

"So I did," Hinata agrees. "Neither living nor dead, I wandered, unsatisfied in any pursuit I encountered. No human company could satisfy, no earthly place could entertain, no words I spoke or sang or screamed could convey that depths of my suffering and infinite loneliness. So I come for judgment. When I stand before my creators they will list my sins and throw me somewhere made for the worst of the liars and cheaters, but I can accept that."

"Thus your resolve," he hums. "But you have yet to explain your god and lover and companion and killer to me yet."

Hinata laughs, sending ripples along the cloth. "Isn't that obvious? He's you. You're the Corvus I desire."

"Me?" An answering laugh. "I have my own sins to atone for, little crow. I am no one's god."

Hinata reaches back, high, high behind him. Fingers light on cheekbones, curl at his skin, draw him closer. He moves with all the quiet certainty of a dam break and the strength of the moon's pull on the tides. He meets Hinata's mouth in the burst of seafoam through a hole in the beach rocks, erupting into the air and filling the space and loneliness below the bow of Hinata's lip. He is cold as death and his profession, impossible to hold as a distant shore, and dragging Hinata into him like a riptide, fatal and inevitable.

"I have been cursed with a body that rejects my mind and a mind that hates my body. I have scratched out the eyes of those who steadied my wings in the name of love. I do not deserve a god of compassion and forgiveness. I deserve you, the god of infinite patience and relentless death, my one true partner." Hinata gasps at the end, out of breath and time.

"Do you wish me to lie with you, Hinata Shouyou?" The reaper asks, low and willing, but Hinata shakes his head.

"Only destroy me intimately," he murmurs. "I want to see my life, small as it is, reflected in my eyes and the stars as I go, desperate and pained."

"As you wish." He dips his head in the dark and that is the last Hinata ever hears from him.

He feels the burn as if it were a part of him, squeezing his neck as his muscles burned, desperate and failing, the clawing in his throat as real as every frantic gasp for air across the court. The clenching of his heart the same as when he was with his team, the people he treasured (betrayed) above all else. The fire in his eyes burning in another, a lonely king, a solitary king, a boy as real as he was, casting aside scepter and jewels and thick furs to kiss the ground as Hinata did, to kiss _Hinata_ , every time that ball touched his fingers like it was meant just for him (it was, it was). His heart burned for love as his legs arms throat neck skin did.

He hears every squeak of dedication on the floors, not the sound of practice and sneakers, but the sound of love for a sport and for a people. Each pant not a gasp for air but a conversation between the seven on one side about their health and their spirit and their trust. Those same pants, echoing in the walls of Hinata's room because he knows the sounds his monarch makes better than anyone and he knows just how they would make a symphony together to rival any orchestra in Japan. But there is only him, alone on that stage in that spotlight, playing and performing and waiting for his duet to be complete until the curtains finally draw shut.

He tastes the sweat on his lip, the unavoidable truth of love--love of sport or humans matters not, but in truth, love is about the sweat shed and blood offered (tears are the enemies and friends of no man or feeling). The watermelon on his arms and elbows, too far gone to mind, and too hot to care for the stickiness but for the cool drip of liquid and the sweetness of victory even in loss. The heat--always too strong--in his mouth, never learned from but devoured too fast to mind the taste of heat searing his tongue on the days the senpai felt it right to treat their kouhai.

He sees, in every blinding flash of black across his vision, the moments of death. The rushing of the city and all its inhabitants. The carelessness. The alluring red, red, red of the lights above him and the almost irresistible urge to step off onto the blackness, as wild as an tempestuous sea, just to test his death against the blinding eyes and screams of the cats on either side of his head. He sees the grey plume of death smoke curling in front of him, beckoning and welcoming despite the tears blurring his eyes and the foul taste of death in his mouth and down his throat. (Well, Suga-san had said, it's probably best you don't take after Keishin and I after all. Live a long and healthy life, Hinata.) He sees the edge of every cliff he's ever wandered too close to, the reds and yellows and loud words telling him to fear and to stay away when all he wanted to do was ask that cliff _are you the one?_  But the rocks were too sharp and the water too soft to ever call him to their depths.

He feels.

He feels the sensation of the last drop of life leaving his body. The final curtain falls as slow as drifting to the bottom of the ocean, too slight and peaceful to be feared. He waits as the last spark, last molecule heaves and then gives. He feels the breath of wind slice by him as Kuroo's wings unfurl and he spirits away Hinata's soul from his traitorous body and.

He.

Doesn't.

Touch.

The.

Ground.

**Author's Note:**

> [A song.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=TV25AOfgu8w)


End file.
